Five Times Dean Didn't Say Goodbye to Sam
by embroiderama
Summary: The title pretty much says it all. Five AU ficlets. Warning: character deaths
1. Chapter 1

Title: Five Times Dean Didn't Say Goodbye to Sam

Author: embroiderama

Challenge: spnchallenges chart challenge - first good-bye

Characters: Dean, Sam, John

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: character deaths, language

Spoilers: Pilot, Faith

Word Count: 2552

Disclaimer: None of the Winchesters belong to me, alas.

Summary: The title pretty much says it all. AU ficlets

Note: Thank you to eloisebright for the swift and excellent beta. Any remaining mistakes are all mine.

1.

Dean looked at the big box and the little box and thought the little one looked like it was just for play. Like Daddy had his real hammer, and it was big and heavy and black, and Dean's play hammer was small and red and easy to pick up.

The little box almost looked like it would be easy to pick up.

But Daddy didn't pick it up, he just leaned on the table it sat on, holding onto the edge of the table, even though his hands were still all wrapped up in the white stuff.

"C'mere, son," he said, and his voice sounded all hoarse and quiet like it always did now.

Dean walked up closer to the little box, and then Daddy bent down and picked him up. He hugged Dean close, and Dean felt the weird scratchiness of the white stuff wrapped around Daddy's hands.

"It's okay, Dean," Daddy whispered in his ear. "I know you don't feel like talking right now, and I get that, son. Believe me, I do. But they're going to take them away in a few minutes, so we need to say good-bye now."

Dean pressed his face into the weird, thick fabric of Daddy's suit coat and breathed in the smell of cigarette smoke and new clothes. Daddy shifted him around in his arms so that Dean was facing forward, looking at the little white box. Dean reached a hand out and touched the top of the box that Daddy had said was like a new bed for Sammy now.

"Bye-bye, Sammy," he whispered, and when Daddy coughed and squeezed him tight, he hoped that Mommy was hugging Sammy, too, in heaven.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

Dean pushed Sammy behind him and backed up close to the wall, keeping a hand on Sammy's arm. "No! You can't--"

The lady bent down in front of Dean and reached out a hand to touch his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Dean."

He yanked his shoulder away from her, mad at himself for ever having liked her, for ever thinking that she was kind of pretty, kind of like Mom. She acted like she understood, but now he knew that she didn't understand anything. "Sammy's supposed to stay with me. I'm supposed to take care of him."

The lady shook her head. "No, Dean, that's not your responsibility. You have to let grown-ups take care of Sam, and we have a nice family who want to take care of him, give him a good home. Don't you want him to have that?"

"I'm his family! He needs to be with me."

"No, I'm sorry, Dean. You need to stay here at Mr. and Mrs. Talaber's house for now, until we can find a family for you, too."

"All I want is Sammy." And Dean knew he was going to start crying again, like some kind of baby. He hadn't cried since the policeman came to the door of their house and told him that Dad wasn't coming home anymore. He'd been strong for Sammy and made sure that nobody hurt him, and now they wanted to take him away.

"But he's only three," Dean cried, knowing he must look like a baby and hating himself, hating the lady for making him. "He doesn't remember Mom, and he's not--he's not gonna remember Dad. I have to be able to tell him."

The lady smiled a little and said, "Don't you think that might be better? That he doesn't remember?" She said it slow, like she thought he was dumb or something. "That way he won't have to miss them like you do. Don't you want him to be happy?"

And he did, more than anything. He wanted Sam to be happy the way they'd both been happy before Mommy died, when everything had been perfect. He understood, now. He knew it was his sacrifice to make, like people were always doing in the Bible stories Mrs. Talaber read to them all the time. He had to let his brother forget everything, had to let him forget Mom and Dad. He had to let Sam forget Dean, even if it meant Dean had to remember everything alone.

Dean nodded and took a deep breath in to make himself stop crying. Looking down at the floor, he said, "In a couple of minutes, okay?"

"Okay, Dean." She patted his shoulder again, and he didn't bother pulling away.

When the lady walked away, Dean stepped away from the wall and turned around, kneeling down in front of Sammy, who looked confused and upset and about one second away from crying, too. Dean tucked Sammy's t-shirt back into his shorts and wiped a smudge of jelly off Sammy's cheek with his thumb. He ran his hand over the loose curls on his brother's head and tried to smile.

"I love you, Sammy. Good-bye."


	3. Chapter 3

3.

"Come on, Sammy. Stop being such a brat about this."

"Fuck you, it's SAM!" Sam crossed his long, skinny arms over his chest and glared at Dean. "I guess you'll be happy not to have to deal with your BRAT brother when you're at Tech."

Dean sagged down onto the bed. Knowing his kid brother was hurt and worried underneath all his anger and bluster didn't make it any easier to take, especially not after a round of pretty much the same thing with Dad earlier.

"Look, dude, I'm not going to the moon. I'm going to college. You'll still see me, and you know you can call me whenever."

"But Dad said that if you left--"

"Aw, Sammy--" Another glare. "Sam, you know he's just pissed off. I'll give him a couple of weeks to calm down then call and check in. I'll take the bus back down here and meet up with you guys over Winter Break. We'll hunt some evil shit over the holidays, man. Just like always."

"Really?" The raw hope in Sammy's eyes nearly broke Dean's resolve, but he reached into his pocket and felt the printed-out class schedule that he'd been carrying like a talisman, right next to the bus ticket he'd bought at the station yesterday. He thought about the college catalog, with its course descriptions that promised to teach him how to make things work, how to make new things nobody had thought of before.

Dad didn't understand yet that this was just another kind of training. The job they did, they could do it better with some better tools, but first he needed to learn how to make them. It was just four years, and then he could come back to help Dad, and Sammy could go learn something to help them, too.

"Come on, Sammy. Let's get this good-bye thing over with. If Dad's not gonna give me a ride to the bus station, I've got to leave now to walk there."

Sammy's mouth clenched shut, his lips pressed into a straight line, and he folded his arms in even tighter, almost like he was hugging himself. "I'm not saying good-bye to you," he finally ground out. "You're not supposed to leave."

Dean sighed and stood up, crossing the room to wrap his arms around his little brother's shoulders. "It'll be okay. You'll see." Dean squeezed Sam tight one more time and then pulled away to grab his over-sized duffle bag from the foot of the bed. When he reached the bedroom door, he turned around and looked at Sam, who hadn't moved, still standing there wrapped up in his anger and pain.

"Good-bye, Sam."


	4. Chapter 4

4.

Dean surfaces from the heavy sleep that seems to pull at him all the time now and opens his eyes to look across the front seat at Sam. Night has fallen, which tells him he'd been asleep for a few hours at least, and isn't that some fucked up shit? If anyone had ever asked what he'd want to do with his last days on earth, looking at the insides of his eyelids wouldn't have been high up on the list.

Hustle some pool; spend the money on a sweet room and a hot girl. Go out and find one last demon he could drag down into hell with him. Take the Impala out on an empty stretch of highway and see if he could break the sound barrier. Anything other than this, slumped in the passenger seat like a useless sack of shit, sleeping all goddamn day. Looking at Sam every time he wakes up and seeing those terrified eyes looking back at him.

Sam keeps going on and on about phone calls and specialists, but Dean's awake enough to know the truth--nobody's answering the phone. Dad's contacts, the hunters, the researchers, the whole loose and random community of freaks, has dwindled down to a collection of disconnected numbers, answering machines with no tape left, unanswered rings. What the fuck that portends beyond his own personal doom, Dean doesn't know, but it can't be good. Even Dad couldn't piss off that many people.

Dean's eyes close, and the next time they open it's morning. He's still in the car, but there's no movement. The side of the road. Sam's not in the car. Shit. Dean pushes his door open and climbs out of the car, panting like he's just run a marathon, even though he just woke up.

"Sam!" And, damnit, he can't hardly even shout anymore. Rough and breathy like an asthmatic dog. He looks down at the ground by his feet and sees about 56 broken pieces of a cell phone lying there. "Sam!"

And fuck, fuck, he has to sit down again, as the ground goes soft under his feet and his heartbeat swells in his ears. He manages to drop back to the seat, rather than the ground, and when his vision clears and the pounding in his head goes down a notch, he realizes that Sam is crouched in front of him.

"Hey, Dean. I'm here. I'm here," he says in that high, tight unnatural voice that means he's freaking out but wants Dean to think he's in control.

"Where are we?" And Jesus, now even talking makes him feel like he's trying to race up the side of a mountain after a wendigo. He feels Sam's warm hand on the side of his face and only then realizes that his eyes had slid shut again.

"We're just a few hours outside Chicago. There's a good hospital there. I don't--I don't know what else to do."

No fucking hospitals. Dean groans and tries to push up to his feet again, but all that happens is he tilts forward into Sam's hands. His heartbeat swells in his ears again, gushing and pounding like a slow tide, but the rhythm is breaking down, and he thinks maybe he's been dragged underwater again. Everything looks murky and gray, and there's a pain like drowning, and he knows.

He knows. It's too soon. And oh God, Dad. Sam. He blinks his eyes and suddenly everything gets clear enough that he can tell he's on his back, laid out across the front seat of the car. Sam's crouching over him, his face looking like the end of the world, his hand hovering over Dean's chest like he doesn't know where to touch. Dean pushes his own hand up with what feels like all his remaining strength and latches onto Sam's.

Through the pounding and rushing in his ears he hears Sam's voice sounding more rough and desperate than he ever wanted to hear. "Sorry…tried…don't know…nobody."

"Shh," he manages, the air hissing out of his lungs as though from a balloon.

Sam stops talking, meets Dean's eyes.

The last thing Dean can hear, other than is own heartbeat breaking apart like Sam's cell phone, is Sam saying no, no, no, no.

"Good-bye, Sammy."


	5. Chapter 5

5.

"Good-bye, Sam." Dean stood in their latest hotel room with his bags slung over his shoulder

Sam stood and shook his head, his face calm. "No."

"What do you mean, no? You can't say no. I'm leaving, dude."

"Fine, whatever. Then I'm leaving, too."

"Suit yourself." Dean shrugged.

"With you. I'm leaving with you," Sam pointed at his brother.

"Get a clue, man. I said good-bye. Farewell. So long. Adios."

"Yeah, I got that. If I were deaf and Albanian, I would've got that by now." Sam grabbed his bag, muttering something about trying out for the Von Trapp singers, and made it clear that he was prepared to follow Dean out the door. "I just don't accept it."

"This is bull. When you wanted to leave back in Indiana, I let you go."

"Yeah, and Dean? I hooked up with a demon girl and you almost got sacrificed to a tree. That your idea of a good time?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Well, we'll be a little more careful this time. You keep it in your pants around the freaky chicks, and I'll steer clear of friendly strangers. Okay?"

"No."

"Again with the no! Look, Sam, I'm 28; you're 24. We don't exactly need to be holding each other's hands to cross the street anymore. We're not Siamese twins. You've got the insurance money. I want you to take it--"

"No fucking way."

"I want you to take it and go back to school. Go visit Sarah. Be…whatever." Dean waves his hand like he was trying to conjure a dove out of thin air. "Happy."

"Man, Dean, you are so clueless it's not even funny."

"Hey! What are you talking about?"

"I'm not some kidnapping victim. I'm not here against my will. I'm not staying with you because I can't think of anything else to do. You might be driving the car most of the time, but I've got feet and a cell phone and credit cards and everything, you know?"

"So use them, smart boy."

"I will. If you drive out of here without me, I'm going to have to get a car so that I can follow you to the next job. It seems like a huge waste of gas, though, so why don't you just forget about this good-bye crap?"

"I'm trying to do what's best for you here."

"Yeah, I get that. I do, Dean. I know I don't say anything most of the time, but I appreciate it, man. But you've got to cut it out."

"Why's that?"

"Because it's apparently driven you completely bat-shit insane if you've got yourself convinced that after everything that's happened, after everything, that us going separate ways is the best thing for either one of us."

"Man." Dean dropped his bag and collapsed onto the bed with a sigh. "You are one confusing bastard, you know that? You leave; act like you're never coming back--"

"That was years ago! I was 18!"

"So?"

"So normal people leave home at 18."

"And we're normal?"

"No, that was the point. I was trying to be."

"So?"

"So I'm done with that. Normal is over-rated and imaginary. I get that now. What we do is real, and we make things better. That's all I ever really wanted to do."

"Huh. Really?"

"Really."

"Maybe we are Siamese twins?"

"Maybe."

"So, you ready to go?"

"Ready when you are."

"Let's hit the road."

The End


End file.
